Pa. school defending 10 Commandments monument

CONNELLSVILLE (AP) — A southwestern Pennsylvania school district is defending a Ten Commandments monument on school grounds by arguing that it’s not promoting any one religion and was the gift of a secular fraternal organization.

Attorneys for the Connellsville Area School District have covered the monument in plywood until a federal lawsuit filed by the Wisconsin-based atheist group, the Freedom From Religion Foundation, is resolved. The school is about 30 miles southeast of Pittsburgh.

School attorneys say in a document seeking to have the federal lawsuit dismissed that the monument was one of hundreds donated to schools by local chapters of the Fraternal Order of Eagles in the late 1950s. They say it’s adorned with other symbols, including an American flag and two Stars of David, and doesn’t endorse any particular religion but rather “moral and historical ideals.”